A wide variety of surgical techniques have been used to access the spinal column in spinal surgery procedures. For example, some techniques include making an incision in the patient's back and retracting or separating tissue and muscle to expose a wide area of the spine in order to perform the spinal surgery procedure. The invasiveness of such techniques often results in excessive damage to the normal anatomy, and significant and dangerous blood loss.
In an attempt to minimize risks associated with spinal surgery procedures, some surgical techniques have been developed wherein only portions of the spinal column area are accessed during various stages of the surgical procedure. In these procedures, a smaller incision can be used to access a particular portion of the spinal column area. However, access to only a particular portion of the spinal column area does not provide sufficient access for all surgical procedures.
In general, improvement has been sought with respect to such surgical techniques, generally to better provide sufficient accessibility to a spinal column area while minimizing anatomical trauma and blood loss.